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I have just returned from a run. I’m amazed to write that statement. I believe it was likely many years since I last did so. But I found out recently that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts regularly.

This is the first time in living memory that my motivation to exercise has been my health status. In my youth, I jogged because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to alleviate my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, without confronting it. At other times, I exercised because I wanted to get better in running. This was what it meant to me back then to build a better life.

Jogging with altered intent currently prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve related with my physique throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the purposes it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker 5K run. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than an instrument for achievements.

Much has been explored over the centuries about the separation of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most compelling is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation demands psychological development and the reverse is true. A baby’s corporeal feelings – like the corporeal experience of hunger – drive consciousness to develop the skill to perceive hunger as an emotion that can be sated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and fulfillment consistently provided by meal after meal supports the young mind in the same way the nutrition fuels them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the urge to rise and grab an object, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method the body develops power. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as unified as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body may exist in an alternate dynamic – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my body to hold and express elements that my mind considers unwanted or unbearable. In analysis we realized that exist particular emotional states that I worry are too much for me; rather than sensing them psychologically, I unconsciously push them to my physical self, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I often had digestive discomfort – not connected to food intake, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle mentally. This was not a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to my attention by my analyst, and my anxiety and insecurity and anger and alarm could be felt and articulated in place of transformed into physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The worst time I experienced this intense reflux, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. It seemed I was slipping away from my mind. I visited my doctor, who arranged multiple diagnostic procedures, but everything was corporally problematic. The situation was an alternate medic who suggested that the cause might be mental. My therapist agreed. I was surprised, but I also knew it was correct.

Whenever someone experiences a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted upon hearing that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their illness is fabricated. And of course that does happen – people can have their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the corporeal issues exist – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the inner mind using the body to express emotional hurt or anger or whatever emotion the conscious self fails to handle. Occasionally, we may believe our emotions is only valid when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our minds on a personal level, in social contexts and culturally; for what reason do we accept the terrible elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

My experiences have revealed that a better life cannot be built if we remain trapped unconsciously in patterns of interaction, internally and with others, that stem from disrespect, use and dealings. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to spot “out there” in wider society. It may be harder to reflect on how they got out there, and to identify these patterns within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my jogging shoes once more following many years, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to eliminate an emotion, or to surpass a running record, {it